Happy New Year!
And this is a really good lekach recipe.
Showing posts with label judaism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label judaism. Show all posts
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Crazy rabbis are waking up, must be the spring
We Jews don't have very many crazy clerics, but the ones we do have are really trying very hard to get in the news.
(OTOH, how do I know that there are only few? The vast majority of Jews make do with very few rabbis; for all I know the most religious 10% might all be rabbis. Whatever.)
Anyway, Rabbi Nahum Gortald from a rabbinical court south of Tel Aviv urged the authorities to limit the number of female foreign workers, lest the men run away with them. They are stealing our men and jobs! (Well, probably not the rabbis' men and jobs.) This request comes after a woman lodged a complaint at the court after her husband had an affair with a Filipina employee. The government will summarily ignore the request, just like it usually does.
Mind you, if I were married to somebody who goes to Rabbi Gortald to complain about me, I would probably have an affair with a Filipina employee too.
While Rabbi Nahum Gortald is concerned about the Israeli women not having enough men, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef has the opposite problem. He wants to banish hopeless old bachelors (the ultra-orthodox men over 20) from Jerusalem. This will encourage them to find a wife by 19, because, as the rabbi says, "any man who reaches the age of 20 must hurry without tarrying," or else he won't find himself a wife. You heard, men? Hurry up, for tomorrow you might turn twenty and then it will be too late! No woman will ever want you again!
Hold on, I thought they had a massive problem with leftover women whose husbands were stolen by Filipina employees?
The rabbi might have a point, though. If I were to take a husband who'd just read Talmud all day instead of performing marital duties, he better be very young and very pretty. And then we'll talk about those marital duties. Maybe by the age of 20 they are too old to be persuaded to have sex.
On the other hand, what is the rabbi thinking? If some morons listen to him and actually leave Jerusalem, there will be even fewer religious women for them elsewhere. Then they might be lured into bed by secular women. Or, god forbid, Filipina employees.
(OTOH, how do I know that there are only few? The vast majority of Jews make do with very few rabbis; for all I know the most religious 10% might all be rabbis. Whatever.)
Anyway, Rabbi Nahum Gortald from a rabbinical court south of Tel Aviv urged the authorities to limit the number of female foreign workers, lest the men run away with them. They are stealing our men and jobs! (Well, probably not the rabbis' men and jobs.) This request comes after a woman lodged a complaint at the court after her husband had an affair with a Filipina employee. The government will summarily ignore the request, just like it usually does.
Mind you, if I were married to somebody who goes to Rabbi Gortald to complain about me, I would probably have an affair with a Filipina employee too.
While Rabbi Nahum Gortald is concerned about the Israeli women not having enough men, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef has the opposite problem. He wants to banish hopeless old bachelors (the ultra-orthodox men over 20) from Jerusalem. This will encourage them to find a wife by 19, because, as the rabbi says, "any man who reaches the age of 20 must hurry without tarrying," or else he won't find himself a wife. You heard, men? Hurry up, for tomorrow you might turn twenty and then it will be too late! No woman will ever want you again!
Hold on, I thought they had a massive problem with leftover women whose husbands were stolen by Filipina employees?
The rabbi might have a point, though. If I were to take a husband who'd just read Talmud all day instead of performing marital duties, he better be very young and very pretty. And then we'll talk about those marital duties. Maybe by the age of 20 they are too old to be persuaded to have sex.
On the other hand, what is the rabbi thinking? If some morons listen to him and actually leave Jerusalem, there will be even fewer religious women for them elsewhere. Then they might be lured into bed by secular women. Or, god forbid, Filipina employees.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The dicks and the League for Human Rights
Ihmisoikeusliitto (Finnish League for Human Rights) wants a law permitting boys' circumcision and making it available through the public health care system.
This is the League for Human Rights, not against them. Right? Let me check again. Right.
I would have thought that on the general scale of human rights the right to keep one's own body parts would rate fairly high, and the right to cut off somebody else's comparatively low, but I guess the League for Human Rights thinks otherwise. Silly me.
But first a bit about the facts:
1. The circumcision debates list all kinds of benefits and drawbacks to the procedure, but if you start to look at the studies you can see that they are all pretty inconclusive either way. The bottom line is, in the words of the American Medical Association, that "virtually all current policy statements from specialty societies and medical organizations do not recommend routine neonatal circumcision". I don't think the case should be argued on any medical merits.
2. In Finland there is no law concerning circumcision, and for a long time there was no legal precedent, either. Circumcision has been tolerated for as long as there has been a Jewish and a Muslim community, who traditionally did it among themselves without demanding anything from the public health care system, and circumcision became the subject of public discussion with the current Muslim immigration. The new immigrants understandably consider it their right to do what the established minorities have been doing for about 150 years, but often can't afford it on their own.
In 2008 the Supreme Court decided that religious circumcision is not a crime as long as it's done in a proper medical way.
But the court of course decides what the law is, not what it should be.
3. Most importantly, no country in the civilized world bans male circumcision, and our brave leaders don't want to be the first.
Back to Finnish League for Human Rights' statement.
The arguments for a law permitting and funding circumcision are ridiculous. The League for Human Rights says they don't believe that there would be any fewer circumcisions if the procedure is forbidden than there is now, and expresses concern that if circumcision is forbidden the people will turn to medically unsafe practitioners.
As a Jew, I find the implications very insulting. We are fairly law-abiding people, fairly well aware of various human rights concerns, and for the most part not very fanatically religious. Moreover, while I am most decidedly not a fan of Islam, I - unlike, apparently, the Finnish League for Human Rights - don't think that they are all criminal fanatics, either.
There is a precedent: circumcision wasn't outright forbidden in the ex-USSR, but it was made quite difficult. And guess what: most Jews there didn't do it.
For those who would circumcise their sons no matter what there are other ways to discourage dangerous methods without permitting the procedure. First of all, there is such thing as medically necessary circumcision, and I think at least some of those people will find a sympathetic doctor. Second, one way of dealing with it would be to make medically sound non-medical circumcision a fairly minor crime (battery, for example, or even minor battery) and make a medically unsound circumcision an aggravated battery, for which parents can actually go to prison.
Banning circumcision won't get rid of it completely. But if people who want to circumcise their sons will need to find a sympathetic doctor, or a sympathetic country, and possibly get a fine and/or a suspended sentence when caught, at least everyone who is in doubt or who is just doing it because it's a tradition will stop doing it. It's worth a try.
As to being the first: there used to be a time when it was legal almost everywhere to rape one's wife or to beat one's children. Finland wasn't the first country to ban those either, but doesn't it wish it were?
This is the League for Human Rights, not against them. Right? Let me check again. Right.
I would have thought that on the general scale of human rights the right to keep one's own body parts would rate fairly high, and the right to cut off somebody else's comparatively low, but I guess the League for Human Rights thinks otherwise. Silly me.
But first a bit about the facts:
1. The circumcision debates list all kinds of benefits and drawbacks to the procedure, but if you start to look at the studies you can see that they are all pretty inconclusive either way. The bottom line is, in the words of the American Medical Association, that "virtually all current policy statements from specialty societies and medical organizations do not recommend routine neonatal circumcision". I don't think the case should be argued on any medical merits.
2. In Finland there is no law concerning circumcision, and for a long time there was no legal precedent, either. Circumcision has been tolerated for as long as there has been a Jewish and a Muslim community, who traditionally did it among themselves without demanding anything from the public health care system, and circumcision became the subject of public discussion with the current Muslim immigration. The new immigrants understandably consider it their right to do what the established minorities have been doing for about 150 years, but often can't afford it on their own.
In 2008 the Supreme Court decided that religious circumcision is not a crime as long as it's done in a proper medical way.
But the court of course decides what the law is, not what it should be.
3. Most importantly, no country in the civilized world bans male circumcision, and our brave leaders don't want to be the first.
Back to Finnish League for Human Rights' statement.
The arguments for a law permitting and funding circumcision are ridiculous. The League for Human Rights says they don't believe that there would be any fewer circumcisions if the procedure is forbidden than there is now, and expresses concern that if circumcision is forbidden the people will turn to medically unsafe practitioners.
As a Jew, I find the implications very insulting. We are fairly law-abiding people, fairly well aware of various human rights concerns, and for the most part not very fanatically religious. Moreover, while I am most decidedly not a fan of Islam, I - unlike, apparently, the Finnish League for Human Rights - don't think that they are all criminal fanatics, either.
There is a precedent: circumcision wasn't outright forbidden in the ex-USSR, but it was made quite difficult. And guess what: most Jews there didn't do it.
For those who would circumcise their sons no matter what there are other ways to discourage dangerous methods without permitting the procedure. First of all, there is such thing as medically necessary circumcision, and I think at least some of those people will find a sympathetic doctor. Second, one way of dealing with it would be to make medically sound non-medical circumcision a fairly minor crime (battery, for example, or even minor battery) and make a medically unsound circumcision an aggravated battery, for which parents can actually go to prison.
Banning circumcision won't get rid of it completely. But if people who want to circumcise their sons will need to find a sympathetic doctor, or a sympathetic country, and possibly get a fine and/or a suspended sentence when caught, at least everyone who is in doubt or who is just doing it because it's a tradition will stop doing it. It's worth a try.
As to being the first: there used to be a time when it was legal almost everywhere to rape one's wife or to beat one's children. Finland wasn't the first country to ban those either, but doesn't it wish it were?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
